Matana Roberts

Born in 1975 in Chicago/USA. Matana Roberts is an internationally celebrated composer, performer, band leader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist, and mixed-media practitioner. Working across many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, music composition, visual art, dance, poetry, and theater, Roberts is perhaps best known for their acclaimed “Coin Coin” project – a multi-chapter work of ‘panoramic sound quilting’ mixed media performance work, that aims to expose the mystical roots and intuitive traditions of American creative expression, while maintaining a deep and substantive engagement with narrative, history, community and political expression within sonic structures.

In recent times, they have served as distinguished guest composer at the University Of Chicago, chair of the Music Sound department at Bard MFA, music & sound fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program. New performance works and scores have been commissioned by Donaueschinger Musiktage (DE), Miller Theater’s Composer Portrait series (US), The Crossing (US), Walthamstow Borough Of Culture (UK), Brooklyn Rider (US) and by the composers, Claire Chase, Elaine Mitchener and Johnny Gandelsman, while their mixed-media artworks have been shown across a variety of solo and group contexts including a major residency and solo exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum, and works shown at Akademie der Künste, daadgalerie and Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), Bergen Kunsthall and New York’s Fridman Gallery.